Bluejay Beat Podcast:
Key Stats:
Creighton’s 51 points were its fewest in any win since a 50-48 win at Missouri State in 2008, and their fewest in a home win since a 48-47 triumph vs. West Texas A&M on Feb. 20, 1986. They made just 1-of-19 from three-point range (5.3%), the worst shooting night from long range in Greg McDermott’s tenure as CU’s head coach. But it was worse than that: they were 14-of-20 on layups and dunks, and 6-of-32 on every other shot. Rough.
It drew comparisons to a 2015 home loss to #21 Georgetown, which is a game all over the CU record book at CHI Health Center for all the wrong reasons (fewest points in a game, 40; fewest points in a half, 17; worst field goal percentage for a full game, 20.8%; worst field goal percentage for a half, 17.9%; biggest margin of defeat, 27.) If you remember anything from that game, it’s probably that the Jays only made 11 shots the entire day, and missed 23 consecutive shots over a 17-minute span where the Hoyas went on a 31-6 run.
This is not company you want to be in. And yet! Here we are.
Also of note: it was just the fifth time during Creighton’s streak of 915 straight games with a made three-pointer where they made just one, and first time since Jan. 25, 2017 at Georgetown. Is this the season where that streak ends? Someone asked me that last night, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens.
Recap:
You could call Thursday’s 51-44 win over Kennesaw State a rock fight, but that would be an insult to rocks. It was ugly, it was borderline unwatchable at times, but it was a win because somehow the Jays made just enough plays to grit one out. Better, more experienced Bluejay teams have let games where they shot poorly turn into losses because they didn’t double down on defense to compensate. If there’s any gold to find when you crack open the rock that this game was, it’s that.
Kennesaw State’s three primary scoring options (Terrell Burden, Chris Youngblood, Spencer Rodgers) combined to shoot 7-for-38 from the floor and score 21 points. But chalking up the Owl’s shooting woes to a below average team having a below average night does a disservice to the role CU’s defenders had in causing it. The Jays had a good plan, they executed it well, and that should be encouraging. Taking the pulse of Bluejay fans online, it’s not, but I disagree. UAPB and Kennesaw State are better than their preseason numbers indicate with legit playmakers. They will both win a lot of games in their leagues. If the Jays can defend like this while their offense finds its’ rhythm, the outlook for the season changes.
On Burden, their strong, crafty point guard, the Jays used a combination of tactics to keep him from getting the half-step jump on the defense that led to Iowa State fouling him 15 times on Tuesday night. CU went under ball screens to stick with him. They moved their big man into different spots in their ball screen defense — sometimes staying closer to the paint, sometimes coming all the way out near center court — to keep him guessing. Mostly, they stayed glued to his hip so he couldn’t get a head of steam going.
On Youngblood and Rodgers, CU took advantage of the length and athleticism of their wings to be in their face on the catch, and make their lives difficult. Not many shots were uncontested or open. The breakdowns we saw Tuesday night weren’t there Thursday for the most part.
“We had game film, we had their sets, we knew their calls, and we sniffed those out during the game,” Greg McDermott said on his postgame radio show. “The guys took the scouting report and really executed it to perfection. For a young team to do that, especially when things aren’t going well offensively, that’s a sign that we’re growing up a little bit.”
Creighton doesn’t win this game without that defensive effort, which is a positive. They won’t win against better competition — or anyone in the Big East — shooting as poorly as they did Thursday. That’s a negative.
So the question then becomes, are the right guys taking the right shots? Ryan Hawkins was 2-of-10 from the floor and 0-of-5 from three-point range. He has a four year body of work at Northwest Missouri State that says he’s a much better shooter than that. Ryan Nembhard was just 4-of-10 and had a couple of missed shots at the rim that he finished against UAPB. Alex O’Connell has shown that he’s a bit better than the 1-for-5 he shot from long range, too.
“I didn’t think our movement was very good at all,” McDermott said. “We didn’t have hardly any back-cuts, and those created good looks for us Tuesday night. If nothing else those draw attention to the lane. I do think the right guys got the right shots for the most part. But we missed a couple at the rim, and we missed free throws.”
They missed eight free throws; cut that in half and they win by 11. If they make two of the three shots they missed at the rim, or if just two more 3-pointers go in, they win by the 17-18 point range they were expected to, and everything else looks a lot better.
But they didn’t, and the result was one of the ugliest wins in McDermott’s tenure as head coach.
The strange thing is, it didn’t start that way. They scored 10 points on their first eight possessions. Nembhard scored in transition on a nifty Euro move:
And O’Connell threw down an alley-oop:
In other words, it looked an awful lot like a continuation of the second half of Tuesday’s win. Then Nembhard picked up an early foul, went to the bench, and things went south. By the time he returned four minutes later, the offense had just one more point than they did when he left; they never really found their rhythm again after that, either. After scoring 10 points on their first eight possessions, it took 22 possessions to get their next 10 points.
Depth at point guard is going to be a problem until Shereef Mitchell returns; Rati Andronikashvili has the ball-handling skills but doesn’t have enough grasp of their systems to run the offense efficiently at the moment. That was exposed a bit in this game. What was really exposed, however, was how much they struggle to score in the half court regardless of who’s running the point, as the Owls raced back on defense to take away transition opportunities. Eventually, CU abandoned the three-point shot almost entirely and made repeated, concerted efforts to find driving lanes and passing windows to their bigs.
Trey Alexander and Alex O’Connell both had transition layups:
Ryan Kalkbrenner had not one but two dunks:
And after Ryan Hawkins made a pair of free throws at the 8:28 mark, CU led by 10, 42-32. But they just couldn’t seem to put KSU away. A 12-5 run over the next six minutes made it 47-44 Creighton. Suddenly, CHI Health Center was playing pump-up music during a late-game timeout to try and manufacture energy — a surprising place to be in a game CU was favored to win by nearly 20 points. Who would they draw up a play for?
Turns out there was little debate, according to players and coaches after the game. Hawkins, the sixth-year senior who has delivered in so many clutch moments during a storied DII career, is their unquestioned go-to guy at this point. And he delivered a massive basket, posting up KSU’s center and banking in a short jumper to make it 49-44 with just over a minute left.
Hawkins’ jump shot wasn’t falling, but he made a couple of crafty veteran shots at the rim — including the one that clinched the win — and grabbed 10 rebounds. He’s the first Bluejay with 10 or more rebounds in each of CU’s first two games of a season since Doug Swenson in 1998-99.
After two games and two wins, it’s pretty apparent the Jays are every bit the work in progress we expected them to be. There will be highs and lows. Avoiding losing more than they win on the nights where they’re “low”, like they were on Thursday, is the goal so that by February when this group (hopefully) gels, there’s something to play for. If their defense continues to play like it did Thursday, that’s a much more distinct possibility than it was four days ago.
